On Mattering

We all swim in the same sea of people wanting to matter, voices wanting to be heard, and an endless search for validation. Without this community of people that believe in you, even if it’s just a little bit, it’s easy to fall into depressed feelings. Then there’s the other side – what if you have this big community but you feel alone?

Both sides can be difficult, and social media makes both sides easy to find – emptiness and fulfillment. If you sign into social media you can see people with SO many followers. It’s hard to look at the numbers and know exactly how they got there. Was it time and effort, being genuinely liked or popular, or maybe they paid for it.

Either way, it’s easy to fall into this trap of seeing other people get more interaction, more friends, more everything, and it can be hard to wade those waters.

You can delete it all, and be alone. Maybe build a real community face to face. But that requires a different sort of effort.

Still. Effort. Everything requires effort.

And that’s the punch line. There aren’t that many people who will see you as someone without intense, dedicated, consistent, effort.

Your family should be there for you, I hope, sometimes they’re not. Even when they are there, you still have to show up – call them, be around them. That’s effort.

So often, we look at the world as things we should have – that we should matter, that people should want to talk to us, but I think the real struggle is that no one matters except yourself – to yourself unless you experience selfless love. How many people do you selflessly love?

How many people matter to you because of something? If your partner broke up with you, would they still matter to you in a meaningful way? Would you support them and push them to be all they could be, listen when they’re hurt? Those followers – did you just randomly select them because they were people, or did you find them because of something you had in common, some value you help? If their views opposed you, how quickly would they stop mattering to you?

When we search for being worth something in the wrong places, we will never find it. It will always lack something. Validation is only part of self-worth.

I want to matter, I want to be popular, but I realize I myself will never truly matter to anyone but myself and my family. To everyone else what I do is what matters.

I know that sounds lonely, but there’s hope:

• Go start putting yourself first. Be selfish with your heart and time.
• Dedicate yourself to things that matter to you – your causes. Causes give us purpose, drive, and life.
• Create community. You will get out what you put in, sometimes 1:1, sometimes you have to put 100% in to get 10% back. It’s a tough competitive world, hone your expectations or better yet…
• Don’t have expectations. You will never be let down if you never expect anything.

Life’s tough. There are so many things that make us feel helpless and insignificant, but without your step forward, there would be no steps forward. We each have footprint – carbon is what everyone talks about, but we’re all part of the collective humanity, and we’re all entirely ourselves at the same time. There is no other you. Go fall in love with that fact that we are here, against all odds. We exist, and that matters.